“News reports about my interview with The Guardian are misleading, and they do not reflect my complete opinion. Let me be clear. I do not agree with what Mr. Snowden did. He has damaged American international relations and compromised our national security. He leaked classified information and may have jeopardized human lives. That must be condemned.

“ I never praised Mr. Snowden or said his actions rise to those of Mohandas Gandhi or other civil rights leaders. In fact, The Guardian itself agreed to retract the word “praise” from its headline.
...

I mean, according to the unbending, ironclad rules of this arena (which have been helpfully explained to me by many of my commentators over and over and over and over again) those are the only two positions anyone is permitted to have, right? Disagree to the smallest degree and your Obot ass is unceremoniously Serwered to the curb:

@DanielSerwer@wikileaks Edward Snowden has done far more for the world in the last 2 months than you have in your life. Does that help?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 6, 2013

Which is sad.

Because I used to enjoy Congressman* Lewis' blog.

But now that he has obviously capitulated to the nefarious forces of unbridled fascism I doubt I'll ever visit it again.

Instead I will sit here quietly and watch the fireworks as the entire horde turns and begins attacking Congressman Lewis' competence, loyalty and fidelity to civil rights. If past performance is any guide they will do this in near-perfect Limbaughesque unison, completely oblivious to how strange chants of "Mindless Obot!" sound coming from such an obediently lock-stepping bunch.

18 comments:

I keep saying it: Sooner or later the people who flock to posts like this to defend Greenwald and hurl abuse at his critics will discover that he has written something even they disagree with (if indeed they are capable of independent thought). And then they will suddenly find themselves denounced and defrocked, forced to join Driftglass, Rick Perlstein, Charlie Pierce and all us lesser Obot Kool-Aid-drinking outcasts in the barren wastelands reserved for those who have been banished by The Prophet. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth...

You know while it is fairly galling to be suddenly referred to as a "neocon", or "fascist" or "authoritarian stooge"....after literally decades of being labeled as a "hippy","n**ar lover", "gaywad" "tree hugger", "commie" or "libtard" and being urged to "love it or leave it"...I am kind of getting used to it.. I just consider the source.

....but then when I really consider the source, various people who "gave Bush the benefit of the doubt" in regards to Iraq...in 2004! who only became "politically aware" at about the same time, or worse yet, people who were actually card carrying members of the elephant brigade..(Huff...Cenk et al)at a time when I still owned the same car I own today...Thats when the steam really starts coming out of my ears.Nothing like being lectured on proper Indy car driving technique by people who just got the training wheels of their bikes...

“At the end of an interview about the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, I was asked what I thought about Mr. Snowden’s actions. I said he has a right as an individual to act according to the dictates of his conscience, but he must be prepared to pay the price for taking that action. In the [civil rights] movement, we were arrested, we went to jail, we were prepared to pay the price, even lose our lives if necessary. I cannot say and I did not say that what Mr. Snowden did is right. Others will be the judge of that.”

Well, talking about anything else - literally - is preferable to having a little conversation about just how intrusive our national security state may have gotten . . .

And, if you're not willing to sit tight until the proper authorities can take whatever measures they deem necessary to visit "justice" on you, it apparently means you're unwilling to "pay the price" for your actions.

Congressman Lewis seems to have forgotten that there were a whole lot of people crossing that bridge with him. Nobody is in a position to stand with Mr. Snowden.

Now Mahakal - put those goal posts back! Nobody compared Snowden to MLK. GG just tried to twist Congressman Lewis' words to pretend Lewis was praising Snowden when he did nothing of the sort and Lewis wrote a blog post to clarify. So let me clarify:

I will agree that Snowden has revealed some important elements of American Intelligence Policy, but I personally understood over a decade ago what computers and data mining could do. TIA was not cutting edge technology. It was close to trailing edge.

Snowden revealed what he did as an egotistical lark by a libertarian kind who personally knows he is better than we are. In his ego-fueled idiocy he doesn't care who gets hurt by his actions. He has very probably gotten someone killed already, and he is making it harder to protect civilization from the radical idiots.

I am aware of this (purely as general knowledge and an understanding of both computers and military intelligence) and I would not have released the information he did. But it was inevitable that someone would.

We can and should take advantage of what has been released without approving its release by the individuals who did it. They are not heroes. They (including Greenwald) are irresponsible fools who don't know or care what damage they do. They somehow "know" that it is in the greater good.

This isn't like the picayune crap wikileaks released This stuff matters. Now it's out. The releasers are not heroes.

Wish I could find a good response in this mess. I can't. I do think that Snowden should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Russians, though. Oh wait. He has been. Think we will ever see him again? There is some justice.

Marindenver, I am only responding to your own quotation regarding the March on Washington which was of course led by MLK. The actual standard that Congressman Lewis held Snowden short of was that of Gandhi, an even more absurd comparison.

Wow! I read Driftglass every day and while I don't always agree with his views I respect them because he articulates them with an ardent honesty. I really don't understand what some tool of our government says about anything (they will change their minds if the polls dictate them to do so) and I certainly don't trust their words if by chance I should understand them.Quit fucking with each other and get to business. Every one of us is being fucked with, in our name, by a government we should be proud to call our own. Yet, we act as if our views are the only sensible ones there are and "fuck you if you don't side with me 100%."We are children in a playground. We need our "government" to tell us what is right and wrong. Politics is not played by children. That is a big person's game. Our job is our jobs and what we do to keep them. I have never been more cynical in my whole life as I am now. I watch with amazement as the circus I loved as a child has become everyday life. Bravo... If we all play our parts well enough some of us may come out of this alive.

Honesty really is the best policy and even when we may be mistaken in our understanding or limited perspective it requires no real mental gymnastics to keep one's balance. This makes it easier to observe and report the imbalances one sees.

Of course, every imbalance is in some sense a dipole, seemingly endless in availability. ;)

Glenn Greenwald was such a pig ignorant, incurious intellectual pygmy that he supported the invasion of Iraq after 9/11. Not to mention the cognitive dissonance of quitting the USA to be with his partner whilst simultaneously supporting noted homophobe Goldbug Ron Paul.

Now I'll reflect on our immaturity. We do want to have ironclad rules according to which we can make our own. But they're never there. We haven't grown up to recognize that. I understand that a blog needs topics and circumstances that make blogging worthwhile. This is a sad indictment of blogging, but it's true, alas.

Holy fuck. If you have even just waded into the Federalist Papers, you know how scary this can become, how barely grounded our "founding" "fathers" were. They were, for the most part, liars and connivers. Yet we adore them. Now we have some goofy guy in Brazil pointing out that our current president, whatshisname, is also a liar. And that's a cause for concern?